Anthony Edwards (Zero Hour) - EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

On ABC’s ZERO HOUR, created by Paul Scheuring, Anthony Edwards plays Hank Galliston. Hank is happy editing a small magazine that investigates and largely debunks X-FILES-type issues – until Hank’s wife Laila (Jacinda Barrett) is kidnapped and he discovers that some supernatural conspiracies are real.

ZERO HOUR has had a bit of a rough road – it premiered Thursday, February 14, but ABC pulled it after three episodes. The series has now resumed its thirteen-episode run on Saturday nights at 8 PM.

This is Edwards’ first series regular gig since his years playing Dr. Mark Greene on ER. Before and since, the actor has appeared in a plethora of films, with Goose in TOP GUN and Gilbert Lowell in the first two REVENGE OF THE NERDS films as two of his more beloved characters.

At a Q&A session speaking with the Television Critics Association, Edwards relates that after finishing ER, “I said I would never do a one-hour television show again. I was done. When ER was done, I felt like I had really accomplished something. It had been an amazing eight years, and I was ready for a new adventure, which included my family and taking time and moving to New York. It really took a while to recover from that. I also knew that if I was going to come back to television, having done that, it would have to be something that was as exciting to me as that [ER] was going in there, and like with all things in life, it was a surprise. This was a great surprise when Lorenzo [di Bonaventura, one of ZERO HOUR’s executive producers], an old friend, sent me this script, and I read it, and I could not put it down. I just said, ‘If these guys are crazy enough to tell this story, I want to do it with them.’”

As to how he sees Hank, Edwards first jokes, “Well, the most important thing is actually to be surrounded by beautiful women.” Barrett and Carmen Ejogo both clearly qualify in that regard. Then he gets serious. “What’s great about Hank Galliston is that he gets to be you. He gets to be the audience in a lot of ways. He gets to go on this journey without knowing at all what’s going on. He’s as bewildered at the beginning, I think, as the audience is. So for me, that’s a great place to play, because whatever these geniuses [referring to series creator Scheuring and executive producer/writer Zack Estrin] come up with in the scripts, and whatever these wonderful actors to come up with, I get to react to. The real fun of this is that every script has been a surprise. And the journey that Hank is going on is, he has no preconception of where he’s going to go. So where he ends up hopefully will be as fun for you as it is for me as the actor playing it.”

There’s a party later and Edwards is in attendance. Surprisingly, he’s by himself for a few moments, and he’s happy to talk more about his ZERO HOUR gig.

Is part of the appeal of Hank as a character is that he’s so driven by love of his wife? “Well,” Edwards says, “I think generally all characters’ motivations have some form of love in relation to what they’re doing, and it manifests in different ways, but yeah. I think any time you raise the stakes at that level, it makes for better drama.”

A lot of the people Edwards has played are highly trained people – doctors and police – with very specific skill sets. This wouldn’t seem to describe Hank, which is just how Edwards says he likes it. “It’s great, because I think storytelling-wise, we don’t have anything to fall back on, as far as, ‘Well, he can shoot his way out of this.’ I think in that way, that’s kind of the way into the story is, you feel like this could be you. Hank Galliston could be kind of anybody.”

Edwards laughs when asked if he’s had to learn how to do anything – perhaps watch-making, as timepieces loom large in the story – for ZERO HOUR. “No, because if he’s anything, he’s a reporter, so the skills I had to learn were trying to ask good questions and trying to find answers.”

So was it particularly appealing that Edwards wasn’t playing someone in a position where the character has a particular kind of ego? “No,” Edwards replies, “I think what was appealing particularly was the overall story. If they’d wanted me to play another role in this, it would have been attractive to me, too. It wasn’t just the role of Hank. If I was a young actor and I could play the role that Scott Michael Foster [who portrays Aaron Martin, one of Hank’s magazine assistants] is playing, that would have been very attractive to me, too. I think it’s the overall picture that always really attracts me. The character is kind of a second priority for me, in a way.”

Does this mean that Edwards likes epic storytelling with fantasy and/or science-fiction elements? “I do at certain times. I’m a really eclectic reader, and I’ll read historical novels and then I’ll also read crazy fantasy and different things. I think the fun of it is that I’ll enjoy something as specific and literal as E.R., but at the same time, I have no problem jumping into MODERN FAMILY and the fantasy of PUSHING DAISIES or something that was just great style.”

The pilot for ZERO HOUR was shot in Montreal, with production relocated to New York for the rest of the series. The Santa Barbara, California-born Edwards and his family now live in New York, but he says that, as New York stands in for places all over the globe in ZERO HOUR, he’s been introduced to areas he never knew existed. “I love living in New York, and I’ve loved it for the last ten years, but to be able to go through a production designer [Stuart Wurtzel] who’s taking us to a place or a part of the city that you’ve never seen before, it’s that kind of access that’s half the fun of being an actor – the way in TOP GUN, I got to fly in a plane and here we are, people open their doors and we’re in people’s houses or remote weird places that you never get to see normally.”

Ask how far along the project was when he became involved, Edwards replies, “They were at ABC – they were about four weeks from going. They’d already been talking to Jacinda and Carmen about their roles, and they came to me, and we had one conversation, which answered all my questions, and I said, ‘Let’s go make this pilot.’”
Even with the ability of production designer Wurtzel and location manager Rafael Lima to find places that look like they could be in Rome or South America, does Edwards have to deal with a lot of green-screen work? “You know, I’ve been out of television so long that I wouldn’t know what ‘a lot’ is. We do enough that we have no problem putting a clock in the middle of some incredible church and knowing that we’re going to have the clock from Strasbourg, France.”

Besides acting, Edwards is also working as a producer, he reveals. “I’m executive-producing a documentary that has to do with PTSD and vets coming back from the war and the effects of it and what happens – the positive side effect when they get treatment. It’s called SEARCHING FOR HOME. I’m doing that project, which means a lot.”

There’s also real-world work to get health services available to more people in need, Edwards adds when asked. “I’ve also been working with my charity group – we’re building the first public children’s hospital in Kenya, Africa, which is very close to my heart.”

Working on ZERO HOUR has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience, Edwards says at the Q&A. “That’s why I think it’s exciting for me, because my experience from being on ER for all of those years was, every Monday, we really loved going to work, and that’s what’s happening here. We have a crew that can’t wait to read the next script. They are not just showing up. They really want to know what’s happening. They all have opinions – our sound mixer is really pissed off how things are going. And that’s what makes it fun. In that way, it’s fun because I feel like, if we go down in flames, we’ve done it together to our best ability. This is as best as we could tell this story and there’s no regrets.”

Winding up the evening, is there anything else Edwards would like to be asked that no one has brought up to him today? Turns out, there is. “How well did my daughter do on her math test? Perfect score.”

Interview By Abbie Bernstein